On Sunday, the people of Belarus will vote to elect their new president, who will be the same as their old president, Alexander Lukashenko. The incumbent will win about three-quarters of the vote because, I’ve been reading, that is the share that he wants to receive. Which only shows that he is a slightly more sophisticated autocrat than his many late and unlamented predecessors in Eastern and Central Europe. (Or Western, for that matter.)
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Author Archives: Doug Merrill
German Demographics
The Berlin Institute for Population and Development published a study this week detailing falling population in certain parts of Germany, particularly economically depressed parts of eastern Germany, the Ruhr valle and the Saarland. In eastern Germany one of the developments that has been discussed on afoe it becoming clear: Deferred or deterred childbirth in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of communism will have an echo around 2015, as children who were not born around 1990 fail to enter prime reproductive years about age 25. Shortly after German reunification, birth rates in the former East Germany fell as low as 0.77 children per woman. The present rate for all of Germany is 1.36, which the study says is the lowest in the world. (I’m not completely sure of that; I’ve seen very low figures for Spain, Italy, Latvia and Hungary, but don’t have them at hand to check.)
The German newspaper whose website has moderately improved quotes the head of parliament’s Committee on Families as saying the main problem is balancing work and family. No kidding. And about 20 years late.
The accompanying graphic tells another tale: People are leaving poor areas and heading where the money is. Almost all of the big drops–10 percent or more–are in rural parts of East Germany. Can’t keem ’em down on the farm, even the old collective farm. This is a hundred-and-fifty-year trend and should not be fought. People are also moving to the suburbs; just look at the belt around Berlin.
Wisdom of the Ages
The Roman Empire has won significance, and its rulers became famous and mighty, because numerous nobles and sages from various countries congregated there […] As settlers come from various countries and provinces, they bring with them various languages and customs, various instructive concepts and weapons, which decorate and glorify the royal court, but intimidate foreign powers. A country which has only one language and one kind of custom is weak and fragile. Therefore, my son, I instruct you to face [the settlers] and treat them decently, so that they will prefer to stay with you rather than elsewhere, because if you were to destroy all that I have built and squander what I have collected, then your empire would doubtless suffer considerable loss.
Thus King St Stephen I of Hungary, to his son, in an exhortation probably drawn up by a German monk. As quoted in The Hungarians by Paul Lendvai. Emphasis added.
Enlargement Fatigue
Heard the news from Salzburg?
If so, you must have been listening very carefully, for the informal meeting of EU foreign ministers held there this weekend was very quiet, and not just because of the extra dumping of snow the region received, in what has been a very snowy winter.
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Slobodan Milosevic, 1941-2006
Not that this is an original thought, but good riddance nonetheless.
Katja Gelinsky’s Peculiar America, Pt. 2
This time on the front page of the German newspaper whose web site has marginally improved. “Prosecutor demands death penalty for Moussaoui”
Well blow me down. In their closing statements, do German prosecutors generally call for less than the maximum punishment for the offense being tried? “Well yes, your honor, we have just spent weeks telling you how guilty the accused is. But never mind that. We believe the accused should be let off with a slap on the wrist.” I don’t think so.
Think what you will of the death penalty, that is the maximum penalty for the crimes to which Moussaoui has pled guilty. The prosecutor would be remiss in his duty not to seek it. Think what you will of the case against Moussaoui, this is the prosecutor speaking, not the judge, still less the jury. He has a duty as an advocate, and he is discharging it.
A prosecutor seeking the maximum penalty is not even news, much less page one. Unless you have a peculiar view of America.
Le Soir on Islam’s Laicism
An interesting point of view.
“Islam is in fact a laicity-based faith [one
rooted in the separation of religion and government affairs],”
the Franco-Tunisian writer and essayist Abdelwahab Meddeb
explains in an interview. “It has no Church, nor a supreme
moral authority. During his final crusade, the Emperor
Frederick II, had observed that Muslims made a distinction
between the temporal and the spiritual. … We can trace the
origins of the reflection on laicity to Averroès [1126-1198].
He was the first to plant the seeds of the idea that there
existed two truths, one philosophic, the other theologic. He
saw them as twin sisters. But it is his philosophical
successors who end up forging the theory of a dual truth and
bringing about the split between philosophy and theology. …
Let us not forget that the non-separation of religion and
politics is part of the phantasmagoria surrounding the origins
of Islam that is all the rage among fundamentalists.”
By way of Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb, Germany) and its estimable newsletter on European topics. I imagine the article is from Le Soir‘s issue of today, but the link does not specify, and my French is not up to searching it out. Any pointers to and/or translations of the full article gratefully accepted.
MD
Pleased to Meet You, Hope You Guessed My Strain
Bird flu found in migratory swans in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. Poultry have been dying of H5N1 in Nigeria for a month. (Update: Slovenia, too.) (Update 2: Germany and Austria, too. Anyone feeling left out?)
Have a nice week.
Premature Evaluation, pt 2 (Grace and Power)
What to do when you haven’t finished a book but find yourself with something to say about it?
Convention dictates that one should finish a book before reviewing it (although I have my doubts about any number of published reviews), but on the other hand, I’m not trying to sell a review of Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House, by Sally Bedell Smith. So out with the convention, in with the thoughts.
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